Blackrock Hut 1309.3 to Blackrock Gap Trailhead 1310 (.7 miles, 1310 total miles)
I had perhaps my best night of sleep on the trail, or at least the best night of sleep I’ve ever had in a shelter. I passed out when my head hit the air pillow at 10PM, and didn’t stir until 7AM.
Iroh was still out of it, so I ended up dozing until 8:00, knowing we were in for a late start to hike a 21 mile day. When I started to get up at 8, Iroh had another plan to run by me.
He’d gotten much unluckier than I had regarding getting rained on lately. I had gotten rained on here and there for sure, but seemed to have somehow hiked around a lot of it, where he’d been much more directly hit.
Being wet all the time and having wet clothes was giving him a rash, so we came up with a plan to go into Waynesboro today instead from Skyline Drive.
We’d been passing Skyline continuously through SNP, so we might as well take advantage of it. We could hike the 21 tomorrow after we’d recovered from our exhausting day prior.
I texted Sweets to see if her partner could give us a ride to town. I propped my phone up in a nearby tree where I had cell service, and while we waited made hot coffee with my last breakfast essential.
Paperclip and the other section hiker had left by then, but Push and Mike (the father/son LASH team) were hanging out with us for a while, planning a shorter day 11 miles north.
Sweets messaged that her partner, Sharkey, had just gotten back from a three week vacation, and had a lot to catch up on so couldn’t get us just then.
We were happy to hitch to town instead, and left to hike .7 to the parking lot around 11:15. It was an easy downhill, and I hiked in my crocs, not wanting to put on my wet shoes for a short jaunt.
Iroh and I reached the first instance of Skyline .5 in, though it wasn’t a good place to try to hitchhike from, because it was on a switchback curve with no shoulder.
The day was mild, around 70 degrees, and it had been alternately cloudy and sunny since the overnight rain had stopped around 7AM. As we crossed the road and kept hiking, we felt sprinkles falling from overhead.
At the parking lot, the rain died out for the most part, and I went to open the guide on my phone to see what direction we should be hitching toward. Before I could do that, a black RAM van turned the corner and started driving by.
I urged Iroh to stick out his thumb as I did so. He commented that the van was too nice to pick us up, and I told him no way, I got a hitch in a Sprinter van before.
Our thumbs were out for five seconds before we saw the van pull over to the parking lot next to us. We hurried over, as I hoped he didn’t just happen to be parking there.
It was incredible luck, but the man behind the wheel had indeed pulled over for us. His name was Dale, and he had a beautiful dog with him named Skeeter.
Skeeter was black and white, with a mix of boxer, pit bull, and hound. He was extremely sweet, and so was Dale, who said he was happy to drive us to town.
It ended up being a half hour drive, but the miles flew by as we all talked. Dale had lived in a town near the trail in Vermont, but relocated to Savanna, Georgia recently.
He had 5,000 miles on the conversation van, and was on a road trip with Skeeter. Just a man, a dog, and his van.
We passed by several beautiful overlooks on Skyline, hit the highway, then Dale dropped us off at the Waynesboro Walmart, refusing my offer of gas money.
I quickly calculated in the store how much food I needed to buy based on the itinerary that I’d made for us at the shelter in the morning. I picked out enough to last us five days to Glasgow, Virginia.
I bought new earbuds and picaradin spray, then spent a few minutes in the book aisle, wishing I could buy all the books and wouldn’t have to carry them. Reading a whole book in Elkton had been lovely, but it had really whet my appetite for more reading.
While I sat on the curb waiting for Iroh, I looked up movie showtimes. When Iroh arrived I asked if he wanted to see Spider-Man: No Way Home and go to the Mexican restaurant on the way there.
He was in, so we headed over to Los Panchos, a five minute walk away. The restaurant had great enchiladas and frozen margaritas. While we were there, we found out Queen Elizabeth had died, which is a moment I will probably always remember for how specific it was.
After the restaurant, we walked another half mile to Zeus Digital Theater, where a very nice woman let us put our packs and groceries in a side room so we didn’t have to leave them outside for two and a half hours.
The movie was good, and the marketing ploy of putting the original Spider-Man movies on Netflix had apparently worked on me, as I’d never bothered to see No Way Home till now, though it had been in theaters for eight months.
I also just love going to the movies, and it is such a fun zero day activity, especially because there are so few trail towns that have a movie theater.
We waited outside the theater for a few minutes for Sweets to pick us up. She arrived in a red stick shift Subaru, and we piled in after I gave her a big hug hello, not having seen her in five years, since a day hike up Mount Tom in 2017.
There was lots of conversation on our 20 minute drive to the house, which was a located in a gorgeous area a mile away from the trail, with mountains in the backyard, and a cow pasture in view of the front porch.
It was great meeting Sharkey when we arrived, who’d hiked the AT a total of four times, and to see Sweets 11 year old dog, Belle, who had also been on a thru hike and I’d seen several times before.
I felt very fortunate to be treated to such kindness among friends, as I prepped my laundry, took a steaming hot shower, and unpacked all the resupply food I’d bought.
Sweets fixed us an amazing dinner of two types of pasta, shrimp, lots of veggies, and alfredo sauce, while we had brownies that Uncle Iroh had made for dessert.
We all talked about the trail for hours and the people we knew from it, swapping trail stories across the table. Sweets and Sharkey are both AT repeat offenders, and have thru hiked other trails as well, so they have plenty of good stories.
We got to bed around 9, and it was my first evening sleeping in a real bed since Front Royal, about a week prior. We’d been treated to some truly amazing trail magic that wasn’t over yet. As usual, the trail humbled me with kindness, and reminded me of the goodness in humanity.